Time matters. Writing a book like this one requires asking dozens of strangers, usually strangers with impressive titles and hectic schedules, for hours of their time. The scholars, therapists, life coaches, advertising executives, social entrepreneurs, and assorted experts and innovators I interviewed were selflessly responsive to my inquiries and generous with their knowledge. I would thank them all by name if doing so didn’t entail listing everyone in the book. So I will economize: all, without exception, have my gratitude.
My even greater debt is to the dozens of people who entrusted me with personal stories. To say that the happiness curve is, scientifically speaking, a statistic is really to say that it represents the intersection of millions of data points, each one of which is a human biography. At first, when I started work on this book, I wondered if more than a handful of people would share their Voyage of Life. Instead, so many were so forthcoming that I felt I might possess some kind of magical key that unlocked diaries. I was not able to include all of the biographies I collected, but every story contributed insight, and every narrator has my profoundest thanks.